Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder has won a ban against a novel about a disgruntled shopkeeper killing a chancellor who isn’t dissimilar to the current German leader.
…
In the story, drugstore proprietor Hans Hansmann goes bankrupt because of Germany’s economic downturn and blames the chancellor’s policies. He shoots Chancellor Winzling dead during a speech in Hanover, which happens to be where the real chancellor has his home.Two months ago, a court ordered the cover picture of a man to be changed so it didn’t look like Schroeder.
Now Hamburg’s State Superior Court has ruled the whole book was in breach of Schroeder’s human entitlement to respect as an individual.
In the U.S., of course, the First Amendment as well as current fashion dictate that no-one has a ‘human entitlement to respect as an individual’.”
part of the deal
This kind of thing is one of the risks you take on when you choose life as a public citizen.
Notice Schroeder has been just as quick to muzzle the press on other matters. “Does he or doesn’t he? Only his hairdresser knows for sure …”
lack of perspective
If the US had suffered a recent historical trauma similar to the Nazi era in Germany, I seriously doubt that people on this board would be such first amendment absolutists.
Re:lack of perspective
maybe we need one. Then all the libburuls will shut up.
Re:lack of perspective
Them thar liburuls…Where’s that Patriot Act when you need it? Ashcroft, WAKE UP!
Re:part of the deal
I agree on both counts. He’s a politician, or perhaps better, a political animal, not an ideologue. His anti-American demagoguery in the previous elections was a matter of expedience, not principle. Whatever he can do to keep alive politically, while doing the necessary, is what he’ll do.
Re:lack of perspective
Or, apropos of politically motivated assasination, the even more recent historical trauma of the Rote Armee Faktion. Gotta love that Bundesnachrichtendienst and that Verfassungsschutz.